I hear a lot about how the Catholic Church is fading into superstitious myth and becoming obsolete. After a good facepalm I then wonder, “what Church are you talking about?” I don’t think that is a Catholic Church that exists, not the one that exists in reality anyway. It’s hard to back up the claim that the fastest growing religion on the planet is fading. It’s hard to back up the claim that an institution that places such a high necessity on objective reason is superstitious.

Unfortunately some Catholics (far too many) in the last 50 or so years have run with open arms to the modern world to show how “relevant” we are, parading our teaching on social justice as if it’s the summation of the Church, the culmination of our deposit of faith, the epitome of revealed Truth. When Catholics do that we can pretty much be summed up like this:

Don’t get me wrong, our social teaching is important, but it’s three little pages of the 700 page Catechism, and unless you’re a total jerk, it’s pretty hard to disagree with the social teaching. The Church becomes obsolete when she forgets how to church. (yes, that is now a verb) I’m talking about living the Catholic way of life, and the center of that, the crux upon which everything else is based, the very core of our being, is found in the Mass; it is Jesus. At Mass we eat his flesh and we drink his blood so that we will have true life within us. If we Catholics do not get Mass right, we get nothing right.

At Mass we enter into the one true sacrifice of Christ on the cross, and participate in his resurrection in our celebration of the Eucharist. We enter into eternity. The powers and concerns that be in this world lose all significance, and the only thing that matters is the consuming love of God. Christ died 2,000 years ago on the cross, but it is for eternity, and because he, being God, is outside of space and time, it’s the same as if it were today, and the Eucharist is our means as corporeal beings who are bound by space and time, to enter into that eternal sacrifice.

As much as the Mass unites us with Christ who was and who is, it also unites us to Christ who is to come. If we close in on ourselves and say that God’s kingdom is come and realized fully right now, we become self-centered and not Christ-centered, and also have a lot of explaining to do for the state of God’s kingdom. Vatican II did not call for the Church to go out to the world and tell them they are loved and sit around at the bottom of the mountain and pretend all is good. If we dare to claim we are people of love, we have the duty and the obligation to then convert the world and bring it back up the mountain to the Lord. (Verso l’alto anyone?)

We must realize that we are in the “in-between” time as the Church Fathers called it, the time of the sunrise, where the dawn of Christ’s resurrection has broken and is casting out the darkness, but the fullness of day is not yet here, there are still shadows, mysteries we don’t yet comprehend. We must realize that we are not yet there, that we are a journeying people and be constantly moving towards Christ. It is this that makes us the Church that is, that we are not static, but on the move towards God. Secularists want us to believe we are a Church that was, a superstitious few clinging to a relic of the past. Others want us to think we are simply a social work organization. That is not what we are. We are the mystical body of Christ, who was and who is and who is to come. So long as we are a Church on the way, moving towards Christ, allowing him to transform our being in the Eucharist we will remain the Church that is. No proof of our “relevance” will suffice for anyone (especially me, I just don’t care to hear about it). The only way for the Church to accomplish her mission is by conversion, allowing ourselves to be had by the one who is Love, to live more fully in the splendor of the Truth, to be made alive by him who has conquered death. The only way is in Jesus the Christ.

In the tender compassion of our God, the dawn from on high shall break upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace. (Lk 1:78-79)